Nope, it took a while longer than normal (about 10 years longer, but much of that was due to beer). No real assistance until I was married with a kid, when I buckled down and got some help from Pell. I probably would have qualified earlier, but it honestly never occurred to me to go to the financial aid office and ask - I just assumed that since I wasn’t on food stamps I wouldn’t qualify for aid :smack:
Now, if I was the type that could focus on one thing long enough to stick with a major, I’m sure I’d get loans for graduate school.
None. When I graduated from high school, my parents said that they’d help me for my first two years but then I was completely on my own. So I racked up some scholarships that covered tuition (it was a public university and I was an in-state resident) and by my junior year, I had a job that covered room & board. By the next year I had two additional jobs that covered personal expenses and then some. I took 5 years to graduate, but I left not owing anyone a red cent.
I’d say that U.C. Berkeley is essentially equivalent to an Ivy League school in terms of how it will affect your graduate admissions, so if you get in there I’d definitely say it’s worth saving the $90k. I don’t know about their anthropology program, but overall UCLA is a smidge below Berkeley and the Ivy league schools. However, if you are a good student, you’ll still have no problem getting into a good grad school.
Something to consider as well is the fact that racking up huge student loans and then going to grad school is a dicey proposition. If you don’t get subsidized loans, where interest doesn’t start accruing until you’re out of grad school, those loans are just going to grow and grow while you get your PhD. There’s also a chance you may want to take out more loans during grad school (I did).
Personally, I wouldn’t go to the Ivy League school without some significant financial aid as part of the deal. $120k worth of debt just from undergrad is a pretty big burden to start your education with, and once you get into a good grad school no one will care where your undergrad degree is from.
I have no loans for undergrad, and I graduated with a degree in Anthropology. (I was a cultural anth/museum studies focus.) In Florida, we have Bright Futures scholarships. They more or less cover tuition, and I got a 75% scholarship and worked to pay the rest of it myself. Rent was, thankfully, covered by my mom, and I footed the bill for groceries and “fun money.”
If you can, take out as little as possible in loans for your undergrad years, especially if you want to go on to grad school. I have no debt, but I’m going to be taking out loans to cover tuition, fees, books, and a little bit of my living expenses when I start my library science master’s program this fall. It’s going to cost between $10,000 and $15,000 total in loans for me to earn this degree; while I could do what I did in undergrad and work really hard for not a lot of money and stress out about it a lot, I’m not going to. Why? 1. I’m going to get married within the next couple of years. 2. I don’t need the extra stress. Grad school is going to be crazy enough. 3. It’s the only debt I’ll be accruing during that time, and I can pay it off without too much stress. I’m also thinking about the possibility of taking on a second master’s program after I’m done with this one, as, well, it’s easier to get library jobs if you have experience and a second master’s that is your research specialty. ::shrugs::
Don’t get yourself into a ton of debt right away, but don’t go to the worst school because it’s cheap either.
ETA: Anthropology seems to be a smaller department in a lot of schools, so you generally would have more access to professors and research projects because of this. I never had a huge anthropology class (over 50 people) unless it was a core class that lots of people took for those random state-mandated “high school part 2” credits. Go see what the departments are like if you can in the schools that you’re considering; it’ll give you a good idea as to whether it’s a good fit.
If you switch to something like, say, English, you’re always going to have a big department. With smaller humanities/science/social science fields, you’re going to have fewer people to compete with for the professors’ attention.
I went on the parental plan, zero loans, worked part time to pay for books and gas money. It was the local state university which cost less then my Catholic boys high school did. No partying, not a lot studying. I hope to be able to send my kids out of town for college. My friends who did had loads more fun and did better in school, but paid for it mostly with loans.
0 undergrad, 54K grad school, paying back 60K (I got a 1.6 interest deal, it’s not even a loan, more like a grant).
However, looking back on it, I would not have gone to McGill undergrad even though I got out debt free and it is/was a great university (have no problem with the school itself). It was great and fun but they don’t exactly GPA pad and I got a LOT of questions about “why Canada” during interviews. It didn’t help that I moved around a lot as a kid, was not from the state I was attending grad school in etc. etc…
I would either have gone to UMass, or Brandeis, which offered me about 50% of the tuition in academic scholarship. I also got into a couple of ivies but the combination of my grad school and undergrad loans would have been far too stifling…my sister and I are really close in age and our parents would not have been able to pay for 2 private school tuitions at once without blowing the entire thing on undergrad (we were expected to go to graduate school).
So yeah, I would take out more than I did for undergrad but not to the tune of 120K for my bachelors alone.
Also, keep in mind that there are ways to have loans forgiven - teaching for a time in rural or urban communities, for example. See here for some examples of ways to have your loan burden reduced.
Giraffe’s advice is generally sound, but you really need to know the pathway to success in the program in you’re pursuing. If everyone in the field comes from Ivy League school’s undergrad program, you might want to seriously consider it as well.
Remember the Dale & Krueger study. More selective schools = greater financial returns and alumni network. But Berkeley and UCLA are fine schools as well.
For undergrad I took out 0 loans. I got a scholarship from the state for most of it and my parents paid the rest. For my upcoming master’s degree I am going to have to borrow regardless of where I go, but I haven’t decided upon schools yet.
I am surprised that most of the people in this thread haven’t taken out loans for school. Am I mistaken in my perception that most students have loans or are people who don’t have loans more likely to respond to this question than people who owe a lot?
If the Ivy League school in New York you are talking about is Columbia, definitely go for it! It’s my alma mater and even though I’m still paying off my student loans (from graduate school), I have never regretted my decision to attend. The other thing to remember is that Columbia (and Cornell, too, I’m sure) have great financial aid packages. I’ve already paid off the small amount of loans I had for undergraduate - I’m just paying off graduate school loans now.
